The crisis that has befallen humanity since early 2020 can be overcome only by humanity itself. We won’t be rescued by any third party. Not by dolphins or ET. Not by science or religion.
As individuals we can ask God for help in any difficulty and it will be there, immediately. But even God will not intervene to save the human race unless and until we demonstrate that we are worth saving.
One way, perhaps the only way, we can do this is by rethinking the assumptions that have led to the dead end in which humanity is now trapped. I believe that if women and men can find a way to work together in harmony with God and with nature, our world will be transformed beyond anything we can imagine.
As I argued in Part 1 of this series, men not only dominate the planet, its other inhabitants, and its resources, we also dominate our own species, Homo sapiens. Naturally women have reacted against this. Unfortunately, the type of feminism that has become common in modern times is concerned more with pitting women against men, than in creating a brand new way of organising society around all humans, male and female.
Some women are persuaded that the only way they can succeed is by taking on and defeating men at their own game. This only perpetuates the male-designed system that has ruled our world for millennia, and which suits those women able and willing to use it better than their male rivals.
But we have an advantage here in Ireland. As I described in Part 2, a few men, notably James Fintan Lalor, Patrick Pearse, Éamon de Valera, and Seán Ó Riada, displayed an allegiance to, or at least an understanding of, a feminine ideal of Ireland. Whether through poetry, prose, music, or political rhetoric, each man evoked an ageless truth about this country that has survived invasion, colonisation, secularisation, and consumerism.
This truth is the spiritual reality of Ireland as Éire or Ériu, a queen dethroned and ravaged by a predatory male. Some identify that predator as Britain or John Bull. I refer to him as “the ruler of this world”.
The cynical would dismiss these notions of a female national spirit as ignorant superstition. But even the more open-minded might regard this line of thinking as too abstract, maybe a bit airy-fairy.
After all, what did Lalor and the others think of the women around them? Did their recognition of the female essence of the country translate into empowering or forming alliances with actual, flesh-and-blood women in their own communities?
And does the obvious answer – no, by the way – mean these men were hypocrites? Again, no.
Lalor, Pearse, etc., lived in a world designed and run by men. None would have claimed to be any sort of feminist, even if he had understood the concept. They reflected the attitudes of their times. Other than as a sexual partner, woman was either the “helper” to her man when he needed her, or the “weaker sex” whom he was obliged to protect from danger.
An historian or researcher interested in the life of James Fintan Lalor, for example, would be hard pressed to find any female who played more than a supporting role in his life. Lalor was the eldest of 12 children, nine boys and three girls. He never married and there is nothing in the scant record of his life to indicate any deep feelings towards a woman.1
Probably his longest female relationship was with his mother, Anna or Anne. She died in 1835 when James Fintan was in his late-twenties. In 1825, during his brief spell as a boarder at Carlow College, Lalor wrote to “My dear Mama”. It’s clear from the opening sentence that the boy viewed his mother primarily as an intermediary between himself and his father.
In reply to my father’s letter which Mr Fanning has delivered to me, you will let him know that vacation will end on the 15 of August.2
Perhaps the letter is an early sign of the estrangement between father and son that worsened over time. It may not be representative but, on its own, the letter does not suggest any strong empathy towards the woman who bore him in her womb for 9 months.
Given that he was hardly spoilt for choice, Patrick Pearse unsurprisingly did not include any woman in his paeans to Irish heroes. Although he respected the women around him, he tended to shy away from any intimate contact with them. He valued strong women and acknowledged that their strength often exceeded that of men like himself.
In one of his essays, Pearse told the story of an old woman whom he saw verbally abusing a British sentry outside a Dublin barracks. Pearse connected the woman’s actions to those of the Suffragettes, whom he admired. As far as he was concerned, the old woman was “one of the few unconquered souls in Ireland”.3
Nevertheless Pearse assigned the practical task of securing Ireland’s political freedom largely to men.4 He made this plain in a statement which he read outside the GPO after he and his comrades had set the 1916 Rising in motion. Calling for support from Dublin’s citizens, Pearse announced that:
There is work for everyone: for the men in the fighting line, and for the women in the provision of food and of first aid.5
Frustrating as such attitudes might have seemed to women like Countess Markievicz who wanted to get closer to the action, Pearse’s division of responsibilities reflected male presumptions of the time. But Pearse also hankered after something he detected in the female psyche. As a friend Mary Hayden recalled,
He looked on the purity, the power of self-sacrifice, which is to be found more commonly in women than in men, as something divine. On this side he could understand them, for these qualities were strong in his own nature.6
Had he lived a few decades longer, Pearse’s insights might have contributed to a greater balance between men and women in the organisation of the new state. As it was, Éamon de Valera, who led Ireland for most of its first half-century of independence, was criticised for pushing women to the margins of society.
Unlike Lalor and Pearse, de Valera was married. The union with his wife Sinéad lasted 65 years. She was, in one biographer’s words, “a classic Irish housewife and mother of the period… gentle and self-effacing”.7 Dev knew he was a lucky man. Their son Vivion recalled his father advising him to
‘Listen to the women, Viv. Your mother has wonderful common sense.’8
If this sentiment indicates that de Valera shared Pearse’s appreciation of woman’s considerable attributes, it did not result in the kind of radical reordering of society we need right now. Coogan contended that de Valera ‘had no feeling for feminism’.9 But given the misguided form that movement took, de Valera’s lack of support was hardly a character defect.
The real pity was that de Valera did not identify an alternative to copper-fastening women’s second class status. So when he published his new Constitution, he was criticised for rolling back the pro-women provisions in the 1916 Proclamation and the earlier 1922 Constitution.10 Mary Hayden, who had noted her friend Patrick Pearse’s astute understanding of the female mind, was disappointed with the provisions for women put forward by de Valera:
‘What is proposed by the new Constitution is not a return to the Middle Ages. It is something much worse.’11
Unlike de Valera, Seán Ó Riada did not have to worry about the role of women in society. He was a musician, not a politician. The world of music to which he belonged in mid-century Ireland was largely a male bastion.
Ó Riada moved between two aspects of that world, traditional and classical. The first was virtually all male – just look at the photo here of Ceoltóirí Chualann, for instance. On the other hand, the small coterie of classical musicians in Ireland was more diverse. Even in the 1940 and 50s, there were quite a few female members in the Radio Éireann Symphony Orchestra which Ó Riada sometimes conducted. However, as was the case in many other occupations, female musicians were paid less than their male counterparts.12
Contrasting though they were as far as the status of women was concerned, Ó Riada accepted both worlds as the status quo. Like the other men discussed here, Ó Riada was a revolutionary. But he would likely have agreed with the note of caution sounded by James Fintan Lalor in his advice to anyone who would lead a revolution:
The very foremost banner should never be too far forward. In advance, but not miles nor months in advance — a stride before his regiment, a day before his people — this is a leader's place.13
Each of these four men harboured an intuitive appreciation of the feminine presence that sustains our country. But, for different reasons, none of them translated that understanding into actions that would have transformed Irish society. The reason is simple. The time was not right. Our world, our very species, was not confronted with the existential threat we now face.
In these turbulent and unprecedented times we could use the leadership any of these extraordinary men might have provided. But their insights can yet inspire us. We can stand on the shoulders of these giants. We, the people of Éire.
In Part 4 I will outline what I think we should do next.
There is only one vaguely romantic moment recorded in the sparse Lalor archive. In one of his newspaper columns published many years later, Thomas Clarke Luby recalled spotting his old comrade trying to steal a kiss from a chamber-maid while the two men were staying at a Limerick hotel. (Irish Nation, 14 Apr. 1883).
James Fintan Lalor to Anne Lalor, 22 Jul. 1825, National Library of Ireland, Ms. 8563/16.
Patrick Pearse, The Coming Revolution: The political writings and speeches (Cork, 2012), p. 124.
As one historian has argued, the role of Countess Markievicz as the only woman among the leadership of the 1916 Rising “was exceptional and does not represent the experience of any other women.” (Mary Bridget Lee, ‘Redefining Éireann: The Decline of Women’s Rights in the Era of Irish Nationalism 1916-‐1937’ (Thesis, University of Michigan, 2015), p. 40).
Ruth Dudley Edwards, Patrick Pearse: The triumph of failure (Dublin, 1990), p. 291.
Quoted in Ibid., p. 53.
Tim Pat Coogan, Éamon de Valera: The man who was Ireland (London, 1993), p. 40.
Quoted in Ibid.
Ibid., p. 491.
Dermot Keogh & Andrew McCarthy, The making of the Irish constitution 1937 – Bunreacht na hÉireann (Cork, 2007), pp. 184-5.
Quoted in Coogan, Éamon de Valera, pp. 495-6.
Pat O’Kelly, The National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland, 1948-1998: A selected history (Dublin 1998).
James Fintan Lalor, “The Faith of a Felon” and other writings, ed. Marta Ramón (Dublin, 2012), p. 110.